2010 BMW 5-series Gran Turismo

Once more from BMW, a vehicle to fit the thinnest of niches.

Among the flurry of fast-roofed, four-door hatchbacks coming to market over the next couple of years, one interpretation clearly stands out: the 2010 BMW 5-series Gran Turismo. Indeed, the unusual, tall proportions of the Bimmer set it far apart from Audi’s more conventionally shaped A5 Sportback and A7, as well as the more low-slung Porsche Panamera and rakish Aston Martin Rapide.

But it doesn’t look that way simply to stand out. When the idea for the car first began to take shape, BMW executives decreed it should offer the legroom of a 7-series and the rear headroom of an X5. Given those two goals, it’s no wonder this new model is no classic beauty.

Better-Looking in Person (We Seem to Be Saying That a Lot Lately)

Although we found the 5-series GT to be better-looking on the road than on the auto-show stand, it remains ungainly and unattractive. The design struggles to be cohesive, but we can say that it looked best in white. We would advise buyers to go for the largest wheels possible—the 18-inch wheels look positively minuscule—and we thought the GT logo, which is styled to evoke the L-shaped taillights, was a nice touch. The car never came across as excessively huge on the Portuguese test roads we drove, and we think it will fit right in size-wise on the streets of North America.

The 5-series GT is one of the few four-door cars with frameless windows, and the effect is nice on the front doors but wasted on the rears, as small quarter-windows remain upright. The view through the steeply raked rear glass is similar to the one you get from inside an X6—in other words, nonexistent. Make sure to check the rearview-camera option box. Out front, it’s hard to tell where the sloping nose ends.

With some station wagons and SUVs, you can open the rear glass independently of the liftgate, but both are hinged in roughly the same spot. In the 5-series GT, however, you can open the lower portion of the liftgate or the entire liftgate itself. Lowering the bottom part creates a vertical aperture at the rear; lifting the entire thing creates a more conventional hatchback opening. The idea behind the trick liftgate is to enhance the sedanlike characteristics of the vehicle and to protect the passengers from a draft of cold or foul outside air. Whatever; in the end, it really just adds weight to this already heavy machine.

BMW further attempts to keep this hatchback’s hatchbackness a secret by cordoning off the passenger compartment from the cargo area with a massive divider. It works; the interior is so quiet you'd never guess you were sitting in something with a huge hatch out back. Honestly, we never were particularly upset with the noise levels found in a 5-series station wagon or an X5, but BMW is eager to point out the improvement. Rear legroom is ample and indeed is similar to that of the 7-series, but you can’t control the front passenger seat or huge panoramic sunroof from the rear, as you typically can in a full-on luxury car. The GT is sold as a five-place vehicle, but the designers aimed at creating the impression of four lounge chairs. So the outer positions are exceedingly comfortable, but the fifth person might as well take a seat on a wooden plank. The middle seat can be substituted for a fixed center console, which makes the GT a four-seater.